new user asks for guidance.I’m new to the forum; where can I learn to use it? how can I send a new post?This should be my first: “Hi, I have never used DSL before; I think it could be a good OS to use on my old PC using now Win-XP. I intend to use it mainly to run audacity on it, (which runned fine until now on this machine:CPU is a AMD Athlon XPprocessor 1600 MHZ , DDRam 256 MB)How do I proceed? Where can I download the (iso)-file and whitch one is appropriate?(or anything else?) , than I mean to have to make a live-CD (DVD), boot is set to ‘first boot : CD-ROM’. “

You got this far, so I think you've figured out how the forum works. There's a link to a help page up the top of the page you're viewing now.

You might as well grab the latest release condidate from the ibiblio download site (http://distro.ibiblio.org/damnsmall/release_candidate/). Grab the file "dsl-4.11.rc2.iso", it'll easilly fit on a standard CD (DSL is only 50MB).

An old version of Audacity is available as a package in the Multimedia section of the MyDSL Respository (http://distro.ibiblio.org/damnsmall/mydsl/). A slichtly newer version is also available as a UCI (see the Wiki page on MyDSL extensions). If you need an even newer version, you'll have to compile it yourself (see the wiki page on making a tar.gz extension).

You might get better performance if you boot using the "dsl sata" command at the boot screen - and it you have a SATA HDD, you will need to use the "dsl sata" command there to allow access to it. See the cheatcodes page on the Wiki (http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/) for more info.

Thanks for the information.I installed DSL on the mentionned machine. It works ; but I can hardly read the screen: darkblue characters ,on a black bord. Can this be altered? I also mannaged to download the audacityprogram, Think I have to unzip it (whit WinRAR?). To transfer it to the old computer via usb-stick will be the easiest way, I guess?Thanks again.

I installed DSL on the mentionned machine. It works ; but I can hardly read the screen: darkblue characters ,on a black bord. Can this be altered?

You should have an image as your background (as in the screenshots that can be seen at www.damnsmalllinux.org), try right clicking on the desktop, a grey menu should appear, select "DFM for X11>Desktop Options" and try changing the colours with the settings in that window.

If the colours are out in program windows too, it might be a graphics driver problem, did they look alright when you booted the Live CD?

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I also mannaged to download the audacityprogram, Think I have to unzip it (whit WinRAR?).

What type of installation did you do? HDD or Frugal?

If you got it from the MyDSL respository, it should have a ".tar.gz" or ".dsl" extension. The file named "audacity.uci" is the latest version available there, but you will need to make sure the PC loads it as part of the startup process (it doesn't stay there after shutdown). If you made a HDD install, the "tar.gz" package will stay on the computer after you install it (on a frugal install, it will need to be treated like a ".uci").

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To transfer it to the old computer via usb-stick will be the easiest way, I guess?

Yep, just double click on the file (no need to "unzip" it) in the file manager (emelfm) and a line of text will appear in the box at the bottom saying it was installed (this won't be permanent unless you used the "tar.gz" on a HDD install). There should now be an icon on the desktop for it, and in the "MyDSL" folder in the DSL menu.

The Wiki pages on MyDSL extensions and persistance (if you're using a frugal install) should give you more info about using MyDSL.